The increasing demand for performance and features in a broad array of computing devices has led manufactures to include multiple central processor units (CPUs) in computing devices to handle a greater number of capabilities and heavier workloads while executing faster than previous generations. Some architectures include CPUs arranged into clusters for executing different tasks and supporting different capabilities. A computing device may include a multi-cluster CPU system to handle the demands of the software and subsystems of the computing device. In some designs, multiple processing cores (e.g., 2, 4, 8 or more) may be included within a single processor device, which may be referred to as a multi-core processor or multi-core CPU.
A computing device may be configured with applications that send and/or receive wireless data, for example, over a WLANs connection. Such connections are enabled through various software and hardware interactions on the device. Specifically, a CPU may execute tasks including a user-initiated application, a transmission control protocol (TCP)/internet protocol (IP) stack, and a wireless local area network (WLAN) driver that interfaces with a WLAN interface (e.g., network card, network interface controller, etc.). In a multi-core CPU, these software tasks are typically scheduled on cores based on ensuring peak throughput, without accounting for how the CPU cores are utilized. However, such scheduling of the WLAN driver and TCP/IP stack software can have a large impact on overall CPU power. As a result, significant power may be used to support WLAN applications on the computing device, which can quickly consume battery life on portable computing devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, etc.). Further, overall performance of the computing device may be compromised by such power use, for example, due to a thermal shutdown triggered when power is too high and heat cannot dissipate quickly enough.